Moto 360 may have always-on OLED screen and sapphire glass

We've also snagged a tiny bit of footage of the Moto 360 actually working.

On the heels of the announcement of Android Wear, Google's wearables OS, Motorola announced the Moto 360, one of the first Android Wear devices. The Moto 360 is the first smartwatch that actually looks like a normal watch, with a round display and body. It looks like it's going to be built like a real watch, too, with a scratch-resistant sapphire display.

This news comes to us from "Houdabao," (registration required) a user on Sina Weibo (via GforGames), the Chinese microblogging site. Houdabao has a great track record when it comes to leaking news about Motorola devices—he previously nailed reports about the Moto G, Moto X, and the Droid Ultra. If the report is true, the Moto 360 wouldn't be the first time Motorola has used a round screen or sapphire on a product. Both of those distinctions belong to the Motorola Aura, a wild $2,000 fashion phone Motorola released in 2009. Using sapphire will raise the price of the Moto 360, but the Omate Truesmart includes a sapphire crystal, and it only costs $300.

Further Reading

We take a look at how Android Wear works, and even manage to break some stuff.

Houdabao also says the Moto 360 will have an always-on OLED display that shows hour and minute hands when the watch is not actively being used. Black OLED pixels use little to no power, so a minimal watch face could presumably be run full time without sucking up much power. Motorola has already wowed us with a functional-yet-power-conservative feature; everyone said the Moto X's always-on voice recognition couldn't be done on a phone battery. The leaker also pegs the watch as having wireless charging, which seems plausible since Motorola has confirmed that there are no ports on the device of any kind. While the Moto 360 is metal (and metal doesn't work with wireless charging), the rear of the watch is an odd purple color in the press releases, and that material doesn't appear to be metal.

Another interesting fact we've noticed about the Moto 360: the display isn't completely round. If you look at the second picture grabbed from Motorola's 360 degree view of the 360 (scroll down), the very bottom of the circle appears to be cut off. Mockup videos of Android Wear on the Moto 360 seem to confirm this, though the size of the black area looks to be exaggerated. The strange thing is that the round Android Wear emulator puts important controls, like the scroll indicator, at the very bottom of the screen. This would definitely get cut off by the black part of the 360 display.

Finally, we'll leave you with this tiny GIF of a real, live Moto 360 in action. Motorola held a hangout-on-air to discuss the Moto 360, and while it didn't purposely show the watch working, one of the presenters started flicking through his notifications at the end of the broadcast. It's easy to claim that a device this different is probably vaporware, but there at least seems to be a real, working prototype out there.

Ron Amadeo / Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work.